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August 24, 2011

In my opinion there are two types of naughty. . . . . . naughty bad and naughty "that's kinda funny". Gracie has never been a naughty/bad girl but she has done a few things over the year and a half we have had her that haven't been quite in keeping with the rules of the house. Every once in a while I'll walk into the living room and see her laying on the ottoman, regal as a queen without a care in the world. I don't have a good picture of that. . . . yet. But I did capture something else last evening that never fails to put a smile on my face even though I should be scolding her to get off the patio furniture. Take a look:

She's camera shy. . . hates looking directly at it.

She maintains her footing perfectly. . . gets up and down as easily as a circus seal on a rubber ball.

Here she is trying to get cozy to lay down. . . . . . she gave up and went back to "perching" on the bench shortly after I took this one.

After her "performance" she cooled off in the grass for all of 60 seconds and wanted in the house.

August 23, 2011

Louisa had an eye for roses. As I am charting them I see she took a lot of care to provide shading to the petals with just three shades of the coral/pink silk. Some of the roses appear to be forming buds, others full buds and then of course the open rose. The sampler was handed down through the family and was kept in a drawer which accounts for the condition it is in.

The fabric I am choosing is Vintage Buttercream from Lakeside Linens. It is a perfect match to the sampler as I view it today. If you are brave enough you might want to use a commercial product for adding instant age like "Distress It". I like tea bags that are dampened and then "pounced" onto the fabric and thread. There may be acids in one or both products which simply means it will break down thread and fabric over the next 100 years or so.

The sampler was probably made before 1850. It is undated but I have Louisa's birth date and genealogy. Here it is for those of you who are curious:

Thank you for the blog posts and emails. It helped me to make up my mind to reproduce it as you see it and provide a darker alternative to those who wish to stitch it differently. I have a goal to get it out this fall or winter instead of waiting until 2012. Let's hope!

August 22, 2011

I'll bet you thought (or wished) I was talking about snow flakes! It's so hot and humid this summer, I know. But the SNOW I was referring to was the sampler by a young girl named Louisa B. Snow, a direct descendant of Nicholas Snow and Constance Hopkins. Everything about the sampler is a bit unusual. To start with it wasn't stitched on the customary American linen we are used to seeing. It was stitched on a fabric called Penelope linen that was first made in Germany and then here in the states.

The next striking element of the design are these large and simply gorgeous cabbage styled roses. I looked through all of my books on antique samplers and didn't find anything like this. They run in a trail across the bottom of the sampler.

Another aspect of the sampler that I fell in love with is all of the stitched virtues that Louisa included. . . . Friendship, Hope, Charity, Love and Cherish Truth. The verse itself reads:

Count that day lost whose low descending sun,

Derives from my hand no worthy action done.

After hinting that I had a Mayflower descendant sampler a while back I received quite a few emails. It took me a while to figure out the genealogy but with some help from the family who sold it to me I was able to connect the dots. Louisa was also a descendant of William Brewster. Another sweet bonus. I would like to hear from you here on this blog or in personal emails regarding the idea of stitching such an unusual sampler. It will be no easy task to chart the roses but I'm excited to do it. I will chart it for 28 count linen (exactly like Louisa's) but how do you feel about the pink roses? Keep them or go for a more antique look? Darker?? Help me decide! I will faithfully reproduce the stitches in the design but the color is up in the air. I could always stitch it in deeper colors but also provide the original colors for those wishing to stitch it exactly as Louisa did. Let me hear your thoughts on the sampler, colors, or your Mayflower connection!

August 19, 2011

First let me say I LOVED reading your comments! Many of you said the pattern reminded you of your own homes. I'm so happy the design made you feel something. I did mention that the design is not our actual 100th pattern. . . . it is the 100th in the full sized line. We have all of those patterns in small packaging to choose from too!

Our winner using the random number generator is Marilyn who wrote the following:Congrats on your 100th design!I like everything about it.The house, tree, crow, flowers.It all "fits"!And the stars on the frame add a lot.Marilyn

Please email me at littlehouseneedleworks@msn.com with your address and we'll mail your pattern out right away!

August 15, 2011

Hooray. . . .the web site is updated with the supply info for the two new releases this month. They ship today to distributors so you'll start seeing them in shops next week some time. If you haven't already read the new newsletter, be sure to see it on the LHN web site. You'll always see a snippet of a new design that will release the next month.

My Dwelling Place

This design, My Dwelling Place, is marked pattern #100 in the full size version of our designs. It is not actually our 100th pattern as we have many others in different lines such as the ornaments and a line called Simple Samplers. But a friend had asked if I was planning anything special for pattern #100 and I said no. However the more I thought about it the more I thought I should. So I switched this one from September to August and labeled it with the magic number. Hopefully it will have a special meaning for you as it did for me when I designed it. Leave me a comment and I will use the random number generator to choose a winner for this chart on Friday morning. Just leave a comment that has anything to do with the design and how it makes you feel or what it means to you (or something like that!).

August 12, 2011

I took a few photos from a trip out to see antiques. Lots of beautiful things! The pretties I would have liked to have come home with were a bit too big for the house. Ron says we are officially out of room for anything new. Not sure I want to remember that he said that!

August 10, 2011

In just a bit I will be posting the August newsletter to the LHN main web site. In the meantime I thought I'd tease you with a rather large snippet view of the new design "My Dwelling Place" that ships next week.

This design and the ornament are the two releases we have this month. The LHN web site will be updated with supplies next week.

If you haven't already seen Nikki's two new releases coming out next week, visit her blog to view the photos. They are adorable!!!! I am crazy about the apple design.

August 7, 2011

When Ron looked at my blog yesterday his comment was, "Where are the cars?" As you know, I blogged the beautiful doors from El Presidio (see last post). I liked the cars too but not sure that the readers of my blog would so I didn't post them. So if you like the pictures today, that's great. Any classic car lovers out there??

No wonder Pixar made two great movies about cars with personalities and faces!

When I saw this car I instantly though Bonnie and Clyde.

We ended up making friends with the owners of this car. We're meeting up with them at another car show in October this year. At one time they owned 17 old cars!!

Here's Ron checking out our favorite car. It isn't the first time we've seen this car at a show but we can't get enough of it!

August 6, 2011

Ron and I went to the car show at the convention center the morning and on our way home we drove through a historic neighborhood called El Presidio. This area of Tucson was once surrounded by large walls to protect the inhabitants from the Apache Indians. The walls are long gone but some of the old historic adobe homes remain.

You all know I love houses. . . . . but doors are a favorite of mine too. I don't know when I've ever seen anything more simple and yet beautiful decorating the front of a house before.

Another beautiful example of preserving the past here in Tucson.

Nothing fancy, that's for sure, but striking against the white. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I think they are spectacular!

August 1, 2011

The title of the post makes it appear as though I'm saying "Hallelujah" to the fact I'm posting an ornament preview picture when in fact, it's the name of the ornament we'll ship this month.

Vonna's finishing this month makes the angels appear as though they are suspended in a cloud. How sweet is that?! This would also be adorable as a small pillow trimmed in "fluff" and hung from a shaker peg or knob. Use your imagination. We call them "ornaments" but you can make them into whatever you wish. This ornament and the other design we are releasing this month ship in a few weeks to our distributors.

For the most part, when it rains in Arizona, it pours during the summer monsoon. Yesterday I was happily stitching away when it got so dark at three in the afternoon I had to turn the lights on. Since it's August 1st I'm excitedly counting the days until fall arrives. Do any of you feel like I do???